Legal News

Mitt Romney (Harvard Law ?75) Suspends Campaign

By Ashby Jones

And then there were two . . . leading presidential candidates left in the race with JDs. Mitt Romney, the former private-equity guru, Massachusetts governor, and candidate who most looks like an actor playing a candidate, has decided to suspend his campaign. Here’s the early AP story.

We never really thought of Romney as a lawyer, largely because he was first and foremost a business guy. That said, had his campaign been successful, Mitt Romney would have been the first with a joint J.D./M.B.A., which he earned from Harvard.

To be honest, we’ve never really understood the whole joint-degree thing. On the one hand, Guhan Subramanian, the faculty chair of the Harvard J.D./M.B.A. program and a Harvard J.D./M.B.A. himself, recently told the Law Blog that a J.D./M.B.A. is as good a proof as it gets that a person can “both read and add.” The Harvard program’s got some alums to back that up: SEC Chair Christopher Cox and Lazard CEO Bruce Wasserstein each have Harvard J.D./M.B.A.s. To others, however a J.D./M.B.A. might be viewed as a sign of indecisiveness, a person willing to spend years and more than $150,000 to make sure there’s no credential unsecured.

Law Blog Mitt Romney-Related Reader Request No. 1: Anyone out there made good use of the joint J.D./M.B.A.? (It doesn’t have to be from Harvard, either. We know Michigan, for instance, has a well-respected joint program.) Let us hear your thoughts.

Law Blog Mitt Romney-Related Reader Request No. 2: With our other dropout posts, we’ve asked readers to submit “bye-kus” in honor of each candidate. We’ve loved what we’ve gotten (click here to scroll through the others).

Most recently, Giuliani got a handful of well-done by-kus, though all were rather negative in tone. Our favorite:

Pony with one trick,
Don’t forget Nine Eleven,
Nine Eleven’s it.

Okay, so bring out your best bye-kus for Mitt!

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 07, 2008 (boomark / email).